So, the ends justify the means? And, whatever is, is good because that's what is. Tautology 101.
The problem with this is that if you always begin with the state of affairs as they are, and claim that is good because that's what is, then you can't make any "corrective" judgments except for the worse. In the realm of the moral, you can't make a moral judgment because you could only make immoral judgments if the state of affairs is good. You didn't explain how it is that the actions of an individual affecting the community and even the state of affairs generally is replaced by the consensus of experts. I am troubled by the beliefs -- and beliefs they are -- that all evolves to a good end and that events are affected by the consensus of experts. I suppose it matters when an event begins and ends to know for sure whether of not it is good. At the height of Hitler's power, millions of people all over the world who believed in his philosophy and militarism, thought things were working out well . Then, when it all crumbled for him and the Reich, millions of people said, "good, things worked out after all." In art we seem to find that the individuals can and do affect the evolution of style (although I am not too sure of that since I also thing art is what is said about it, meaning what the experts agree to say). Just today, trying to thin out my bookcase, I came across Eric Fromm's influential book of the postwar era, The Sane Society. You recall that his thesis was that a whole society could be insane. Hmm... timely. I think I'll keep that book. Clearly, the way things are has no universal claim to the good. But if so, then how can the good be an independent concept if no-one knows what it is, since it has never been defined? wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, January 2, 2011 7:05:37 PM Subject: RE: "mad genius" Frances to William and others... My current preference as an account of the existing world is the theory of evolution, and then that as posited by the philosophy of idealist realism and its naturalist pragmatism. Evolution under this philosophy entails optimistic growth, which has proven to be progressive, in that stuff heterogeneously tends to advance and expand in holistic ways generally for the best. The process seems to be a combine of adeptive chances and adaptive changes and adoptive choices. The cosmos has been found by pragmatists to be made by the agent of purposive telic design, in that stuff has a dispositional tendency to habitually act as it evidently acts, which action tends to be for the most suitable way, and stuff thus exerts all its energy in a struggle to lean toward a good end goal. The spatial bodies of solar systems in this galaxy for example are held together by the habituating force of attractive gravity, despite some errors that occur in their evolution. The stuff of the galaxy simply cannot be other then what it now is. This realist theory of evolution applies equally to such artistic actions as artists making artworks in the world of the arts. If there is a better account of the sensed world, from say creationism or idealism or materialism or nominalism or rationalism, it has escaped me. Below are some quick replies to your numbered comments. 1. The "highest" state that stuff has evolved to is simply the one presently observed in context by ordinary experts. It furthermore need not entail the "broadest" nor "greatest" nor "wisest" state possible. 2. All the best mental paths leading to the goal of intelligence are presently held by normal humans, and then as habitually exemplified by their science. Not all the paths have been good, but in general the overall direction is good. 3. Any normal learned group of expert persons who tentatively agree by a consensus of fallible opinion need merely be ordinary persons engaged in the act at hand, be it in life or in science. It is the collective community that conditionally determines what is found to be provisionally good. The subjective determination of a sole individual person is simply unreliable, because they may be mad and not know it. The assumption here of course is that humanity as a whole species will continue to evolve infinitely. -----Original Message----- From: William Conger [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, 30 December, 2010 12:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: "mad genius" All of this sounds fine except it relies on assumptions that can't be taken at face value. 1. "Highest state it has evolved to". It is not easy to know what that state is. Stephen Jay Gould showed that certain snails, his specialty, evolved to a very highly specialized state in certain South Seas island ravines. So specialized, in fact, that they couldn't survive in the neighboring ravines just yards away. It would therefore seem that evolution to the highest state may be a hindrance or may require other conditions to define what is necessary to the "highest state". 2. "That state for (humans) is...in the highest state...as a whole is cerebral and mental and psychical ands intellectual and logical...therefore thinking...more rational. Who knows if this is the best path? Some might argue that humans were better off in relation to their environment, etc., when they were less "civilized" more like other animals. Further, nobody is sure what is meant by the terms rational, logical, and reasonable. Generally, those terms rely on linear modes of exclusive causality but recent neurology shows that the so-called irrational or illogical or unreasonable are fundamental to what we regard as rational, etc. The "leap of intuition" or the "crazy
